Defining Information Governance: An Exploration with Industry Experts

Trends

Why is records management disappearing and being replaced by information governance?

From Bassam Zarkout: As businesses continue to evolve, the records management profession has struggled to translate the practices of the paper paradigm to the world of electronic information. The adoption of social, mobile and cloud have revealed gaps in many of the traditional records management applications, which are unable to capture content from these new sources and manage them. Simply put, records management has not been able to keep up with the velocity, volume and variety of formats for digital assets.

In this digital age, the records management industry is dealing with many new challenges that are not being addressed by the practices that records management professionals had been using for physical records. While records management solutions are still implemented within many companies, they do not provide the complete management of the record’s metadata, content tiers across storage platforms, security classification and data privacy attributes, as well as content digital rights. The transition to information governance is necessary as records management has its roots and practices based on managing physical files and papers, while information governance is centered on looking after and making decisions about an organization’s information assets, throughout their entire life cycle.

As digital information grows, so do the challenges and burdens of managing this mountain of data. Until recently, much of the industry has been focused on applying principles used to manage physical records, but they are now realizing that records management is no longer a sufficient solution. Companies are only now beginning to understand the importance of having an information governance program to manage electronically stored information across their organization as they drive new standards, controls, processes, disciplines and corporate objectives. This natural evolution to encompass a wide array of features and capabilities will continue to change the way that companies maintain their documents and ensure compliance across the organization and within their vertical industries.

RSD recently developed a monthly blog segment titled Influencer’s Corner where the team sits down with the industry’s top influencers to discuss all that is happening in the world of information governance. To kick this off, the RSD team recently spoke with the following industry influencers to discuss their thoughts on the current state of the information governance market, misconceptions, advice for companies looking to embark on information governance projects and industry predictions for 2015.

Influencers include:

Chris Walker, father of the Principals of Holistic Information Governance, an independent consultant and an analyst with Digital Clarity Group

Bassam Zarkout, CTO of RSD, is a thought leader in the information governance space (conception, design, development and implementation), a frequent speaker at key industry events and a 20 year Information Governance veteran

James Lappin, an independent records management consultant and trainer